Why I don’t have a Nokia Lumia 900 review for you [Updated]

On Tuesday, I got a happy email: the local AT&T public relations representative told me he had a Nokia Lumia 900 review unit he could loan me. Embargoes on the device were scheduled to lift Tuesday evening, and his news meant I could get a first-impressions piece out the door with the rest of tech-news pack.

But I only had my hands on the hardware that Microsoft hopes will give its Windows Phone platform the boost it badly needs for about an hour. The unit I had could not connect to the Internet. It’s an LTE phone, but it couldn’t find that superfast network, nor could it talk to AT&T’s slower HSPA+ system. It could make phone calls and connect to Wi-Fi, but that was about it.

The PR rep had me bring it to the AT&T flagship retail store on the Southwest Freeway at Edloe, where the manager said Nokia had shipped a batch of units with this problem. In fact, the manager said the phone he’d been given to try also couldn’t get a network connection.

Nokia knows which phones are bad, he said, and has a list of the ID numbers for the affected units. They’re being corralled and hopefully won’t make it into buyers’ hands when the Lumia 900 goes on sale Sunday.

I hope I’ll have a working Lumia 900 today. If that happens, look for something here soon. In the meantime, I’ve rounded up reviews of the smartphone in today’s Linkpost.

Usually companies want to send out their best units to the press. If such a dud handset is what gets given to the press to review, imagine what bricks the public will get.

Even apart from the above fiascos, I don’t think it’s good to even think about getting a Windows Phone at this time. They run Windows Phone 7.5. Microsoft is already talking about its replacement, Windows Phone 8. Microsoft won’t guarantee that these current Windows Phones can run the next Windows Phone software, which would make them obsolete very quickly.

It’s a misconception that the press gets the best units. Often they are early units with flaws as I said in my earlier comment. This is a firmware issue. It’s fixable with a patch, which isn’t available yet.

It’s not uncommon for the press to get pre-release versions of hardware. These are often buggy and fraught with issues that are not present in the final release version.

And it’s also not uncommon to get a review piece of hardware that has been given to one or more reviewers before it is given to you. With something like a phone or a computer it could have problems that were installed or inflicted by the previous reviewer.

Thats pretty unfair to Dwight, Amanda. I would say this is honest journalism and has some real news in it too. you would not know about this flaw if he had not said anything about it. He says he will have a review later. The defective phone was not his fault.

Is this the devise that advertises “all other phones were test phones, we have the real one now…” ? They should have tested the shipped product before running that commercial. I was hoping to read a review here.